I am nothing unique, really –I am a drop of waterin the river of society,unsatisfied,unfulfilled,like any other.

We’re headed somewhere collectivelybut that is not a place I wish to see –the fear is always there;being hidden in the stream of history,drowned among the others and forgotlike so many – most –who lived and shaped our lives todaybut still, whose thoughts and names were lost.

There’s a creaking bed next door –a solitary sound –a person quietly turningat eleven o’clock in the morning –sick, perhaps, or tired? Or justunable to see the purposeof facing the world alone?I know that feeling.

That head reminded her of something. Something she knew she’d seen before, but at the moment she wasn’t able to accurately match it with anything in her memory. All the same, that ruffled golden hair in front of her seemed familiar. So familiar that she felt like stretching out her hand to touch it, even though she knew that the owner would probably throw a fit if she were to act on her desire.
The head turned slightly when the owner motioned to look out of the bus window. It belonged to a young woman with milk-and-honey skin and long eyelashes. A ripple of sobbing motions ran through her mind. That woman reminded her of someone, but of whom? When she turned her head a whiff of perfume was blown in her direction – sweet, flowery stuff. Like a large bouquet she just wanted to bury her head in to better sense the full fragrance of the moment. The sweet smell mixing with the humid, dank smell coming from everyone else on the bus. The smell of rain.
The young woman got off the bus at the business college. The moment’s gone, she thought to herself as the bus rode on, leaving another nameless passenger behind in the rain. She felt like crying. She had a feeling that she too had left someone behind in the rain somewhere. In fact, it all seemed so familiar to her, as if it had happened before.

The things I valued
not so long ago –
the things for which I lived
and the ones I left untold
are all now piled together
into one close-packed rhyme
for all now share in fate:
They’ve fallen out of time.

Those things I used to care for,
and those I used to hate,
are all now out of store;
oblivion their fate.

The school I used to go to
has left the Earth and passed.
The town that I grew up in
is breathing at its last.
The people I once knew
have disappeared from view
and it’s no consolation
to think of all the new.

The things I once believed in
is history today.
The earliest of my paintings
is buried under rubble;
nothing is to stay.

But who cares for my words
and who cares for the truth?
The world we live in now
cares only for success and youth.
To say that nothing lasts,
to say that all’s in vain
is not to be expected
to strike a common strain.

And that is why in silence
within my withering heart
I ponder my antiquities
alone and in the dark.

What others will forget
for me alone remains.
What others want achieve
for me is what’s been had
and cannot be again.

As night-time falls I watch the moon’s
pale reflecting light rise up
over the horizon’s far-off dunes
of fields with varying crops,
and listen to the night’s saddening tunes
of crying crickets and falling drops
and an owl who lonely croons
as the moon slowly rises up